ON THE RECEPTION OF THE \'ORIGIN OF SPECIES\'

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ON THE RECEPTION OF THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES'

by PROFESSOR THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY

FROM THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF CHARLES DARWIN

EDITED BY FRANCIS DARWIN

ON THE RECEPTION OF THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.'

To the present generation, that is to say, the people a few years
on the hither and thither side of thirty, the name of Charles
Darwin stands alongside of those of Isaac Newton and Michael
Faraday; and, like them, calls up the grand ideal of a searcher
after truth and interpreter of Nature. They think of him who
bore it as a rare combination of genius, industry, and unswerving
veracity, who earned his place among the most famous men of the
age by sheer native power, in the teeth of a gale of popular
prejudice, and uncheered by a sign of favour or appreciation from
the official fountains of honour; as one who in spite of an acute
sensitiveness to praise and blame, and notwithstanding
provocations which might have excused any outbreak, kept himself
clear of all envy, hatred, and malice, nor dealt otherwise than
fairly and justly with the unfairness and injustice which was
showered upon him; while, to the end of his days, he was ready to
listen with patience and respect to the most insignificant of
reasonable objectors.

And with respect to that theory of the origin of the forms of
life peopling our globe, with which Darwin's name is bound up as
closely as that of Newton with the theory of gravitation, nothing
seems to be further from the mind of the present generation than
any attempt to smother it with ridicule or to crush it by
vehemence of denunciation. "The struggle for existence," and
"Natural selection," have become household words and every-day
conceptions. The reality and the importance of the natural
processes on which Darwin founds his deductions are no more
doubted than those of growth and multiplication; and, whether the
full potency attributed to them is admitted or not, no one doubts
their vast and far-reaching significance. Wherever the
biological sciences are studied, the 'Origin of Species' lights
the paths of the investigator; wherever they are taught it
permeates the course of instruction. Nor has the influence of
Darwinian ideas been less profound, beyond the realms of Biology.
The oldest of all philosophies, that of Evolution, was bound hand
and foot and cast into utter darkness during the millennium of
theological scholasticism. But Darwin poured new life-blood into
the ancient frame; the bonds burst, and the revivified thought of
ancient Greece has proved itself to be a more adequate expression
of the universal order of things than any of the schemes which
have been accepted by the credulity and welcomed by the
superstition of seventy later generations of men.

To any one who studies the signs of the times, the emergence of
the philosophy of Evolution, in the attitude of claimant to the
throne of the world of thought, from the limbo of hated and, as
many hoped, forgotten things, is the most portentous event of the
nineteenth century. But the most effective weapons of the modern
champions of Evolution were fabricated by Darwin; and the 'Origin
of Species' has enlisted a formidable body of combatants, trained
in the severe school of Physical Science, whose ears might have
long remained deaf to the speculations of a priori philosophers.

I do not think any candid or instructed person will deny the
truth of that which has just been asserted. He may hate the very
name of Evolution, and may deny its pretensions as vehemently as
a Jacobite denied those of George the Second. But there it is--
not only as solidly seated as the Hanoverian dynasty, but happily
independent of Parliamentary sanction--and the dullest
antagonists have come to see that they have to deal with an
adversary whose bones are to be broken by no amount of bad words.

Even the theologians have almost ceased to pit the plain meaning
of Genesis against the no less plain meaning of Nature. Their
more candid, or more cautious, representatives have given up
dealing with Evolution as if it were a damnable heresy, and have
taken refuge in one of two courses. Either they deny that
Genesis was meant to teach scientific truth, and thus save the
veracity of the record at the expense of its authority; or they
expend their energies in devising the cruel ingenuities of the
reconciler, and torture texts in the vain hope of making them
confess the creed of Science. But when the peine forte et dure
is over, the antique sincerity of the venerable sufferer always
reasserts itself. Genesis is honest to the core, and professes
to be no more than it is, a repository of venerable traditions of
unknown origin, claiming no scientific authority and possessing
none.

As my pen finishes these passages, I can but be amused to think
what a terrible hubbub would have been made (in truth was made)
about any similar expressions of opinion a quarter of a century
ago. In fact, the contrast between the present condition of
public opinion upon the Darwinian question; between the
estimation in which Darwin's views are now held in the scientific
world; between the acquiescence, or at least quiescence, of the
theologians of the self-respecting order at the present day and
the outburst of antagonism on all sides in 1858-9, when the new
theory respecting the origin of species first became known to the
older generation to which I belong, is so startling that, except
for documentary evidence, I should be sometimes inclined to think
my memories dreams. I have a great respect for the younger
generation myself (they can write our lives, and ravel out all
our follies, if they choose to take the trouble, by and by), and
I should be glad to be assured that the feeling is reciprocal;
but I am afraid that the story of our dealings with Darwin may
prove a great hindrance to that veneration for our wisdom which I
should like them to display. We have not even the excuse that,
thirty years ago, Mr. Darwin was an obscure novice, who had no
claims on our attention. On the contrary, his remarkable
zoological and geological investigations had long given him an
assured position among the most eminent and original
investigators of the day; while his charming 'Voyage of a
Naturalist' had justly earned him a wide-spread reputation among
the general public. I doubt if there was any man then living who
had a better right to expect that anything he might choose to say
on such a question as the Origin of Species would be listened to
with profound attention, and discussed with respect; and there
was certainly no man whose personal character should have
afforded a better safeguard against attacks, instinct with
malignity and spiced with shameless impertinences.

Yet such was the portion of one of the kindest and truest men
that it was ever my good fortune to know; and years had to pass
away before misrepresentation, ridicule, and denunciation, ceased
to be the most notable constituents of the majority of the
multitudinous criticisms of his work which poured from the press.
I am loth to rake any of these ancient scandals from their well-
deserved oblivion; but I must make good a statement which may
seem overcharged to the present generation, and there is no piece
justificative more apt for the purpose, or more worthy of such
dishonour, than the article in the 'Quarterly Review' for July,
1860. (I was not aware when I wrote these passages that the
authorship of the article had been publicly acknowledged.
Confession unaccompanied by penitence, however, affords no ground
for mitigation of judgment; and the kindliness with which Mr.
Darwin speaks of his assailant, Bishop Wilberforce (vol.ii.), is
so striking an exemplification of his singular gentleness and
modesty, that it rather increases one's indignation against the
presumption of his critic.) Since Lord Brougham assailed Dr.
Young, the world has seen no such specimen of the insolence of a
shallow pretender to a Master in Science as this remarkable
production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most
cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors, of this or
any other age, is held up to scorn as a "flighty" person, who
endeavours "to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and
speculation," and whose "mode of dealing with nature" is
reprobated as "utterly dishonourable to Natural Science." And
all this high and mighty talk, which would have been indecent in
one of Mr. Darwin's equals, proceeds from a writer whose want of
intelligence, or of conscience, or of both, is so great, that, by
way of an objection to Mr. Darwin's views, he can ask, "Is it
credible that all favourable varieties of turnips are tending to
become men;" who is so ignorant of paleontology, that he can talk
of the "flowers and fruits" of the plants of the carboniferous
epoch; of comparative anatomy, that he can gravely affirm the
poison apparatus of the venomous snakes to be "entirely separate
from the ordinary laws of animal life, and peculiar to
themselves;" of the rudiments of physiology, that he can ask,
"what advantage of life could alter the shape of the corpuscles
into which the blood can be evaporated?" Nor does the reviewer
fail to flavour this outpouring of preposterous incapacity with a
little stimulation of the odium theologicum. Some inkling of the
history of the conflicts between Astronomy, Geology, and
Theology, leads him to keep a retreat open by the proviso that he
cannot "consent to test the truth of Natural Science by the word
of Revelation;" but, for all that, he devotes pages to the
exposition of his conviction that Mr. Darwin's theory
"contradicts the revealed relation of the creation to its
Creator," and is "inconsistent with the fulness of his glory."

If I confine my retrospect of the reception of the 'Origin of
Species' to a twelvemonth, or thereabouts, from the time of its
publication, I do not recollect anything quite so foolish and
unmannerly as the 'Quarterly Review' article, unless, perhaps,
the address of a Reverend Professor to the Dublin Geological
Society might enter into competition with it. But a large
proportion of Mr. Darwin's critics had a lamentable resemblance
to the 'Quarterly' reviewer, in so far as they lacked either the
will, or the wit, to make themselves masters of his doctrine;
hardly any possessed the knowledge required to follow him through
the immense range of biological and geological science which the
'Origin' covered; while, too commonly, they had prejudiced the
case on theological grounds, and, as seems to be inevitable when
this happens, eked out lack of reason by superfluity of railing.

But it will be more pleasant and more profitable to consider
those criticisms, which were acknowledged by writers of
scientific authority, or which bore internal evidence of the
greater or less competency and, often, of the good faith, of
their authors. Restricting my survey to a twelvemonth, or
thereabouts, after the publication of the 'Origin,' I find among
such critics Louis Agassiz ("The arguments presented by Darwin in
favor of a universal derivation from one primary form of all the
peculiarities existing now among living beings have not made the
slightest impression on my mind."

"Until the facts of Nature are shown to have been mistaken by
those who have collected them, and that they have a different
meaning from that now generally assigned to them, I shall
therefore consider the transmutation theory as a scientific
mistake, untrue in its facts, unscientific in its method, and
mischievous in its tendency."--Silliman's 'Journal,' July, 1860,
pages 143, 154. Extract from the 3rd volume of 'Contributions to
the Natural History of the United States.'); Murray, an excellent
entomologist; Harvey, a botanist of considerable repute; and the
author of an article in the 'Edinburgh Review,' all strongly
adverse to Darwin. Pictet, the distinguished and widely learned
paleontogist of Geneva, treats Mr. Darwin with a respect which
forms a grateful contrast to the tone of some of the preceding
writers, but consents to go with him only a very little way. ("I
see no serious objections to the formation of varieties by
natural selection in the existing world, and that, so far as
earlier epochs are concerned, this law may be assumed to explain
the origin of closely allied species, supposing for this purpose
a very long period of time."

"With regard to simple varieties and closely allied species, I
believe that Mr. Darwin's theory may explain many things, and
throw a great light upon numerous questions."--'Sur l'Origine de
l'Espece. Par Charles Darwin.' 'Archives des Sc. de la
Bibliotheque Universelle de Geneve,' pages 242, 243, Mars 1860.)
On the other hand, Lyell, up to that time a pillar of the anti-
transmutationists (who regarded him, ever afterwards, as Pallas
Athene may have looked at Dian, after the Endymion affair),
declared himself a Darwinian, though not without putting in a
serious caveat. Nevertheless, he was a tower of strength, and
his courageous stand for truth as against consistency, did him
infinite honour. As evolutionists, sans phrase, I do not call to
mind among the biologists more than Asa Gray, who fought the
battle splendidly in the United States; Hooker, who was no less
vigorous here; the present Sir John Lubbock and myself. Wallace
was far away in the Malay Archipelago; but, apart from his direct
share in the promulgation of the theory of natural selection, no
enumeration of the influences at work, at the time I am speaking
of, would be complete without the mention of his powerful essay
'On the Law which has regulated the Introduction of New Species,'
which was published in 1855. On reading it afresh, I have been
astonished to recollect how small was the impression it made.

In France, the influence of Elie de Beaumont and of Flourens--the
former of whom is said to have "damned himself to everlasting
fame" by inventing the nickname of "la science moussante" for
Evolutionism (One is reminded of the effect of another small
academic epigram. The so-called vertebral theory of the skull is
said to have been nipped in the bud in France by the whisper of
an academician to his neighbour, that, in that case, one's head
was a "vertebre pensante."),--to say nothing of the ill-will of
other powerful members of the Institut, produced for a long time
the effect of a conspiracy of silence; and many years passed
before the Academy redeemed itself from the reproach that the
name of Darwin was not to be found on the list of its members.
However, an accomplished writer, out of the range of academical
influences, M. Laugel, gave an excellent and appreciative notice
of the 'Origin' in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes.' Germany took
time to consider; Bronn produced a slightly Bowdlerized
translation of the 'Origin'; and 'Kladderadatsch' cut his jokes
upon the ape origin of man; but I do not call to mind that any
scientific notability declared himself publicly in 1860.
(However, the man who stands next to Darwin in his influence on
modern biologists, K.E. von Baer, wrote to me, in August 1860,
expressing his general assent to evolutionist views. His phrase,
"J'ai enonce les memes idees...que M. Darwin" (volume ii.) is
shown by his subsequent writings to mean no more than this.)
None of us dreamed that, in the course of a few years, the
strength (and perhaps I may add the weakness) of "Darwinismus"
would have its most extensive and most brilliant illustrations in
the land of learning. If a foreigner may presume to speculate on
the cause of this curious interval of silence, I fancy it was
that one moiety of the German biologists were orthodox at any
price, and the other moiety as distinctly heterodox. The latter
were evolutionists, a priori, already, and they must have felt
the disgust natural to deductive philosophers at being offered an
inductive and experimental foundation for a conviction which they
had reached by a shorter cut. It is undoubtedly trying to learn
that, though your conclusions may be all right, your reasons for
them are all wrong, or, at any rate, insufficient.

On the whole, then, the supporters of Mr. Darwin's views in 1860
were numerically extremely insignificant. There is not the
slightest doubt that, if a general council of the Church
scientific had been held at that time, we should have been
condemned by an overwhelming majority. And there is as little
doubt that, if such a council gathered now, the decree would be
of an exactly contrary nature. It would indicate a lack of
sense, as well as of modesty, to ascribe to the men of that
generation less capacity or less honesty than their successors
possess. What, then, are the causes which led instructed and
fair-judging men of that day to arrive at a judgment so different
from that which seems just and fair to those who follow them?
That is really one of the most interesting of all questions
connected with the history of science, and I shall try to answer
it. I am afraid that in order to do so I must run the risk of
appearing egotistical. However, if I tell my own story it is
only because I know it better than that of other people.

I think I must have read the 'Vestiges' before I left England in
1846; but, if I did, the book made very little impression upon
me, and I was not brought into serious contact with the 'Species'
question until after 1850. At that time, I had long done with
the Pentateuchal cosmogony, which had been impressed upon my
childish understanding as Divine truth, with all the authority of
parents and instructors, and from which it had cost me many a
struggle to get free. But my mind was unbiassed in respect of
any doctrine which presented itself, if it professed to be based
on purely philosophical and scientific reasoning. It seemed to
me then (as it does now) that "creation," in the ordinary sense
of the word, is perfectly conceivable. I find no difficulty in
imagining that, at some former period, this universe was not in
existence; and that it made its appearance in six days (or
instantaneously, if that is preferred), in consequence of the
volition of some pre-existent Being. Then, as now, the so-called
a priori arguments against Theism; and, given a Deity, against
the possibility of creative acts, appeared to me to be devoid of
reasonable foundation. I had not then, and I have not now, the
smallest a priori objection to raise to the account of the
creation of animals and plants given in 'Paradise Lost,' in which
Milton so vividly embodies the natural sense of Genesis. Far be
it from me to say that it is untrue because it is impossible. I
confine myself to what must be regarded as a modest and
reasonable request for some particle of evidence that the
existing species of animals and plants did originate in that way,
as a condition of my belief in a statement which appears to me to
be highly improbable.

And, by way of being perfectly fair, I had exactly the same
answer to give to the evolutionists of 1851-8. Within the ranks
of the biologists, at that time, I met with nobody, except Dr.
Grant, of University College, who had a word to say for
Evolution--and his advocacy was not calculated to advance the
cause. Outside these ranks, the only person known to me whose
knowledge and capacity compelled respect, and who was, at the
same time, a thorough-going evolutionist, was Mr. Herbert
Spencer, whose acquaintance I made, I think, in 1852, and then
entered into the bonds of a friendship which, I am happy to
think, has known no interruption. Many and prolonged were the
battles we fought on this topic. But even my friend's rare
dialectic skill and copiousness of apt illustration could not
drive me from my agnostic position. I took my stand upon two
grounds: firstly, that up to that time, the evidence in favour
of transmutation was wholly insufficient; and secondly, that no
suggestion respecting the causes of the transmutation assumed,
which had been made, was in any way adequate to explain the
phenomena. Looking back at the state of knowledge at that time,
I really do not see that any other conclusion was justifiable.

In those days I had never even heard of Treviranus' 'Biologie.'
However, I had studied Lamarck attentively and I had read the
'Vestiges' with due care; but neither of them afforded me any
good ground for changing my negative and critical attitude. As
for the 'Vestiges,' I confess that the book simply irritated me
by the prodigious ignorance and thoroughly unscientific habit of
mind manifested by the writer. If it had any influence on me at
all, it set me against Evolution; and the only review I ever have
qualms of conscience about, on the ground of needless savagery,
is one I wrote on the 'Vestiges' while under that influence.

With respect to the 'Philosophie Zoologique,' it is no reproach
to Lamarck to say that the discussion of the Species question in
that work, whatever might be said for it in 1809, was miserably
below the level of the knowledge of half a century later. In
that interval of time the elucidation of the structure of the
lower animals and plants had given rise to wholly new conceptions
of their relations; histology and embryology, in the modern
sense, had been created; physiology had been reconstituted; the
facts of distribution, geological and geographical, had been
prodigiously multiplied and reduced to order. To any biologist
whose studies had carried him beyond mere species-mongering in
1850, one-half of Lamarck's arguments were obsolete and the other
half erroneous, or defective, in virtue of omitting to deal with
the various classes of evidence which had been brought to light
since his time. Moreover his one suggestion as to the cause of
the gradual modification of species--effort excited by change of
conditions--was, on the face of it, inapplicable to the whole
vegetable world. I do not think that any impartial judge who
reads the 'Philosophie Zoologique' now, and who afterwards takes
up Lyell's trenchant and effectual criticism (published as far
back as 1830), will be disposed to allot to Lamarck a much higher
place in the establishment of biological evolution than that
which Bacon assigns to himself in relation to physical science
generally,--buccinator tantum. (Erasmus Darwin first promulgated
Lamarck's fundamental conceptions, and, with greater logical
consistency, he had applied them to plants. But the advocates of
his claims have failed to show that he, in any respect,
anticipated the central idea of the 'Origin of Species.')

But, by a curious irony of fate, the same influence which led me
to put as little faith in modern speculations on this subject, as
in the venerable traditions recorded in the first two chapters of
Genesis, was perhaps more potent than any other in keeping alive
a sort of pious conviction that Evolution, after all, would turn
out true. I have recently read afresh the first edition of the
'Principles of Geology'; and when I consider that this remarkable
book had been nearly thirty years in everybody's hands, and that
it brings home to any reader of ordinary intelligence a great
principle and a great fact--the principle, that the past must be
explained by the present, unless good cause be shown to the
contrary; and the fact, that, so far as our knowledge of the past
history of life on our globe goes, no such cause can be shown
(The same principle and the same fact guide the result from all
sound historical investigation. Grote's 'History of Greece' is a
product of the same intellectual movement as Lyell's
'Principles.')--I cannot but believe that Lyell, for others, as
for myself, was the chief agent for smoothing the road for
Darwin. For consistent uniformitarianism postulates evolution as
much in the organic as in the inorganic world. The origin of a
new species by other than ordinary agencies would be a vastly
greater "catastrophe" than any of those which Lyell successfully
eliminated from sober geological speculation.

In fact, no one was better aware of this than Lyell himself.
(Lyell, with perfect right, claims this position for himself. He
speaks of having "advocated a law of continuity even in the
organic world, so far as possible without adopting Lamarck's
theory of transmutation"...

"But while I taught that as often as certain forms of animals and
plants disappeared, for reasons quite intelligible to us, others
took their place by virtue of a causation which was beyond our
comprehension; it remained for Darwin to accumulate proof that
there is no break between the incoming and the outgoing species,
that they are the work of evolution, and not of special
creation...

"I had certainly prepared the way in this country, in six
editions of my work before the 'Vestiges of Creation' appeared in
1842 [1844], for the reception of Darwin's gradual and insensible
evolution of species."--'Life and Letters,' Letter to Haeckel,
volume ii. page 436. November 23, 1868.) If one reads any of
the earlier editions of the 'Principles' carefully (especially by
the light of the interesting series of letters recently published
by Sir Charles Lyell's biographer), it is easy to see that, with
all his energetic opposition to Lamarck, on the one hand, and to
the ideal quasi-progressionism of Agassiz, on the other, Lyell,
in his own mind, was strongly disposed to account for the
origination of all past and present species of living things by
natural causes. But he would have liked, at the same time, to
keep the name of creation for a natural process which he imagined
to be incomprehensible.

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